Northern Ireland businesses promised faster broadband
December 18, 2009 at 4:06 pm
£48 million has been pledged to improve broadband speeds for businesses in Northern Ireland. After winning a competitive tender, BT is investing £30 million in the project. The remainder is coming from the European Regional Development Fund’s Sustainable Competitiveness Programme and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development programme.
The project, which is due to be completed by May 2011, will see upgrades to 166 existing exchanges and should see broadband speeds of 10 Mbps and possibly as high as 40 Mbps in urban areas, and 2 Mbps in rural areas. There have been many complaints that the rural service has been far inferior to that available in towns and cities.
The deployment of fibre-optic cables will be a major factor in the improvement scheme. In fact there are few, if any, parts of the UK that will have a similar amount of fibre-optic infrastructure. The Chief Executive of BT, Ian Livingston, called the move a ‘bold and visionary step’ with fibre-based broadband underpinning future economic growth.
The Minister for Enterprise, Arlene Foster, said that the scheme was hugely significant and that the multi-million pound injection in the infrastructure had the potential to create up to 1000 jobs per annum. The project is part of the Northern Ireland Executive’s commitment that 85% of businesses have access to high-speed internet by 2011.
The investment is expected to boost the entire rural community in Northern Ireland. The Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Michelle Gildernew, said that broadband was ‘increasingly an important means of ensuring social inclusion’ and that the project would be warmly welcomed by farmers and rural dwellers.
7Mbps mobile broadband released by Virgin
December 18, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Mobile broadband just keeps getting better, and now Virgin Mobile has raised the bar even higher. The ISP has just launched its latest update to its mobile broadband offering, with a new dongle that allows users to reach speeds of up to 7.2Mbps. The upload speed has also been increased from 384Kbps to 2Mbps.
The new dongle includes a microSD slot, and is up to twice as fast as the previous Virgin dongle, which was only capable of reaching speeds of 3.6Mbps. It is available on a number of different contracts: an 18-month contract with a 1GB data allowance is available for £10 a month, and a 3GB data allowance is available for £15 a month. It’s not a great download limit, but the speeds should make up for that with a far superior browsing experience.
However, although the advertised speed is 7.2Mbps, as always, it is unlikely that users will be able to reach such speeds. Numerous factors come into play when using mobile broadband, such as the location and distance from the nearest mobile tower and the number of users in the area.
Why are faster speeds so important? It really depends on what you use the internet for. A faster download speed dramatically improves the quality at which surfers can watch online video content, such as on YouTube or the BBC iPlayer. It also allows users to download larger files from the internet much more quickly.
Graeme Oxby, the mobile executive director at Virgin Media, said that the company was “thrilled” with the new service. He also highlighted the benefits of mobile broadband, saying that it is “the best way of staying connected on the move”.
O2 to invest heavily in mobile broadband
December 11, 2009 at 11:15 am
Mobile broadband continues to increase in popularity, but this is putting more and more strain on the struggling UK networks. Now O2 has announced that it will be investing heavily in its network to combat the problem.
The efficiency of mobile broadband depends on how well the network can cope with the number of users. With the rise in popularity of mobile broadband, and the huge increase in the number of people using smartphones, the networks fear that this could severely affect their ability to deliver a good service.
O2’s plan is to invest a huge amount of money into its mobile broadband network over the next few years in addition to the £500 million that it has already invested over the last two years. A spokesman confirmed that this was not due to increased competition from other mobile broadband providers, but to enable O2 to handle data at higher speeds.
The upgrade will take place over the next few years. It will see 40 mobile data hotspots installed in London before Christmas, with 160 more arriving in the capital over the next year. In 2010 O2 will install a further 1,500 hotspots throughout the rest of the country.
The 3G network currently covers 84% of the country, and the investments will go some way to counteracting the criticism that O2 has received recently for its poor performance.
The chief technology officer for O2, Derek McManus, said that O2 is now “aggressively accelerating” the growth of its network to “retain our focus on being number one for customer satisfaction.”
Increase in European broadband users
December 4, 2009 at 4:14 pm
The number of broadband users in Europe continues to rise, with the latest figures from the European Commission recording a rise of nearly 3% in the last year.
There were 119 million broadband subscriptions across the 27 nations that make up the EU in July 2009, compared to 113 million at the same time last year. This means that 23.9% of the population of the EU now have a high-speed broadband subscription, up from 21.6% last year.
Of all the types of broadband lines, DSL remains the most popular by a long way, with 94 million users. Despite a huge increase in fibre lines, these still only make up 2% of the total number of connections.
The figures also showed that Europe is seeing an increase in connection speeds, with 80% of broadband users now getting speeds of 2Mbps, a 5% rise from last year.
The one in four that has access to broadband is good news, but it is still a long way from the EU’s goal of one in three households having high-speed internet by 2010.
Of all the EU countries, the ones to get the highest rates of broadband connections were the Netherlands and Denmark, with both having a connection rate of 40%. As well as being the highest rate in Europe, this is also the highest rate in the world.
Viviane Reding, the EU telecoms commissioner, said that broadband is “a pre-condition for a strong digital economy in Europe and for European leadership in new technologies and applications”, adding that “Europe is clearly ready to make the next decade thoroughly digital”.
